What value does a Business Developer really bring to a law firm?

My article last year set me off on a path of needing to enlighten. Enlighten the world about what law firms think of business developers and the value that they bring.

As well as educate those who know very little about law firm business development.

Past surveys that have interviewed managing partners and COOs about the value that their business development departments bring have generally – and enthusiastically – claimed that yes, overall, the value is there, but I have often wondered whether these two particular roles truly understand how intrinsically involved these professionals are with the clients and the owners that make them up.

Day In The Life

I have long thought to turn my prose to a type of ‘day in the life of a business developer’, not only to help the world around me understand what I do (tired of the confused look at dinner parties), but also to confirm that yes indeed the job is an intense one and therefore not for the faint hearted.

The day can start with an intended idea of what needs to get done, largely dictated by my calendar which usually has no less than seven meetings for an average of 40 minutes each, every day. And yes, before you ask, “aren’t they just meetings for the sake of meetings?”, I think deeply about whether to accept that meeting request and will only give up my time for a meeting if I’ve decided something cannot happen in any other forum than that meeting.

So, this meeting schedule dictates where my time is spent, and those meetings can range in topics from people issues (never 30 minutes) to a discussion about the best strategy for a new jurisdiction. In between all of that, the phone pings with WhatsApp, WeChat, Teams, LINE, Jabber and text messages, in between calls that are pushed to voice mail as shame on me should I multi-task.

Notifications are all off, as the stress I used to feel when looking at my phone sometimes paralysed me as I wondered who to respond to first. “Think Covey’s Urgent/Important overtaking everything else...” and that leads me to the right decision, a learned skill I might add.

There is no department in the firm that is closer to the owners of that business than business development. While not a competition, I’ve always thought it quite odd that BD is bundled into that pool known as “support staff” or “business operations” (I quite prefer the term “allied legal professionals” myself, and all of us get that title).

We have an intimate knowledge of what the lawyers do. On most occasions we know the clients and their business better than the lawyers, as we’re onto every single piece of business news about the companies usually before the lawyers, and feed that to them. We also know the macroeconomic environment, and the industries in which our clients are operating, as it’s our job to know that, as without that knowledge, the “product” that we help the lawyers deliver is only so good. Sounds like a lot for a BD professional to absorb on any one day? You betcha.

The Value of Business Development

And are law firms tapping into all that knowledge which largely sits in someone’s head, that is the bones that comprise a firm’s strategy? Pretty sure they are not. Firms not tapping into this wealth are missing a trick. For people who are experts at marketing, we are generally not great at marketing ourselves. So, I see it as our fault that firms, and the leaders that fill the walls of these entities, are unaware of the value that we can bring.

We don’t want them to say: “oh that event was great, the food was amazing and the clients told me they had a good time”. What we do want to hear is this:

“It was the BD team who suggested we package this up for our client and they ended up giving us more work as they were so thrilled with it.”

“The Bids Executive completely restructured the proposal so it was less “we” and more “you” and no doubt that helped us get on the panel.”

“The Client Relationship Manager determined this group of initial clients for a testing phase of a new Product.”

“The BD team suggested we assemble this group of professionals across the firm so that we can better coordinate our activity as a global firm. The results speak for themselves.”

“The PR team came up with the external comms plan and we landed some great press which led to more work.”

How do we get past this? Reporting is an excellent place to start. Pushing our way into senior meetings is another, so we get to tell our success stories. Numbers alongside everything, for example highlight the fees from the clients where BD responded with a bid document. And talk about the wins at every opportunity you get.

I’ve often thought that the reason we don’t boast enough about our successes is we’re far too busy – there’s always the next task to turn to so there’s little time. But it’s probably more because we’re largely understated. We get on with it, ploughing away, hour after hour, just getting things done because we truly believe that’s going to make a client very happy at the end of it. And that’s enough for us.

We certainly don’t do it for the flowers and chocolates from our internal lot! The value of a BD team is enormous to a firm. It always has been and it’s going to become even more critical in a post-COVID world. But that’s for another article.